From: Sean Chittenden <sean-ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2001-08-14T16:31:12+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:19683] String#substr ?

	Perl/C/PHP have substr.... does the ruby equiv exist outside of
the use of regexp's?  Used with String#index, I'd think this method
would be really useful.  It surprises me that I haven't seen it
referenced/used anywhere and that's actually half of why I'm asking: did
I miss this functionality someplace under a different name?  I don't
think so, but I'm not 100% sure.  How have other people dealt w/ this?  
Is there an external module that implements this functionality
someplace?  Are there plans to include it in 1.7?  -sc


Taken from perldoc -tf substr:
    substr EXPR,OFFSET,LEN,REPLACEMENT
    substr EXPR,OFFSET,LEN
    substr EXPR,OFFSET
            Extracts a substring out of EXPR and returns it. First
            character is at offset `0', or whatever you've set `$['
            to (but don't do that). If OFFSET is negative (or more
            precisely, less than `$['), starts that far from the end
            of the string. If LEN is omitted, returns everything to
            the end of the string. If LEN is negative, leaves that
            many characters off the end of the string.

-- 
Sean Chittenden